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I Am My Brother


I Am My Brother
-Inspired by a quest for justice, self love, and identity.

They see us and stare
and try to compare
"How on earth could they share the same DNA?"
"You're not like them...," they say;
But I am my brother.
I am my sister too.

The roads that we took were awfully the same.
One ended in pleasure,
the other in pain. 
But we share the same blood,
the same history; 
For every life that's destroyed,
I think to myself, 
"that could've been me;" for
I am my brother.
I am my sister too.

I've heard it said by quite a few,
"That hoodie you wear doesn't match your IQ."
Since when were we judged by the clothes on our backs?
Since when does your bias determine my black?

My black is your black,
like whips on the backs of my ancestry.
Legacy born in the shacks of the southern most shores--
created the doors,
polished the floors
so that we could restore
the ties that were broken
when black was unspoken.

They still look and they stare.
We're still being judged by the kinks in our hair;
And the talented tenth pretending to care
as if the lives that we've led haven't, too, been unfair.

Or have we forgotten the place where we came?
Is our privilege a shadow?
Is our blackness a shame?

Or are you not your brother--
the son of your mother? 
Is your honor immunity from the plague of this community? 

Do we only unite under struggle?
--False solidarity after disparity--
We aim to give birth but to stillborn prosperity. 
We wake in the midst of mistaken identity.
In finding our "black", we lost our intensity.

(A movement aborted
Coke that's still snorted
Often forgotten
Seldom supported)

Yet,
we are the soul survivors,
a diasporic occasion.
We raised the leader of this nation
and still demand emancipation!

We hide our pride beneath our pain
I am still my brother--
my brother's brother.
Wasted blood propelled us to 
eclipse our gaps,
how we dap, 
the way we choose to wear our caps.

Truth is:
We're not the same,
Yet underneath the scars 
we choose to stand as one.
So take your stares;
We'll take the kinks within our hairs
And lock them into chains of truth,

extend the shelf life of our youth. 

I am my brother, 
my brother's brother,
one day a mother to another,
brother.
I am my sister too. 

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